After Ray DiStefano kidnapped Erin during FBI season 8, Maggie began an intense hunt for the very first person she arrested in her career. The agent was eventually taken as well, but she managed to escape. While Ray eventually died, Maggie was forced to contend with the reality that her own sister had been killed as well.
During an interview with TV Insider, Peregrym admitted that Maggie will "never be the same" after Erin's death. She has played this character since FBI first premiered in 2018, so she's been able to discover different facets of Maggie across several years.
After the loss of a sibling, "You don't ever go back to the person you were before." Maggie will likely start to feel distrustful about the people around her, which is a "terrifying" concept to contend with, according to Peregrym.
We do address that, obviously, and it’s still stuff that I carry with me. I’ll never be the same to a certain degree. Never. I’ll never be the same. Which again was why I was so scared to go this far with my character. Playing something for eight years and then all of a sudden having a loss like this, you don’t ever go back to the person you were before. You’ve got to navigate a completely different set of, I don’t even know, rules, set of understanding, trying to figure out where your place is anymore. What can you trust? And it’s terrifying.
After reading the script, Peregrym was "scared" to film the episode because it meant having to go to a "dark place...in that moment." But she also knew that if they were going ahead with this traumatic storyline, she wanted it to be as "grounded and real and scary as possible."
We have a great writing team and Mike [Weiss, showrunner] was super receptive to my feelings about the script. I was scared to do this script. I was scared to play this part, knowing what a dark place I would have to go to to just live in that moment, and I really cared that if I had to go that far that we did this as grounded and real and scary as possible. And so it was amazing to work with them to figure out, what would be the most heartbreaking thing? Originally, it was written where there was a little bit more of a wrap-up with Peter in the episode. And I just felt like, “Ugh, how could you even talk after discovering your sister?”
Before filming the scene in which Maggie discovered Erin's fate, Zeeko Zaki, who plays OA, was "joking around with me before," but Peregrym told him to stop making her laugh because she needed to focus on the task at hand.
Zaki was very respectful of his co-star and "stayed really still" so the scene could unfold the way it needed to, and the actress ended up filming it in one take, even though it felt like "hell."
I didn’t really know how it was going to go. Yangzom [Brauen] was the director on this episode, and it was so scary. I just kind of went to work and I was like, “OK, I know what I have to do today, but I don’t know how I’m going to do this. I know where I need to go, but I don’t know what my body’s going to do.” And we did it in one take. Zeeko was joking around with me before, and I was like, “Get away from me.” I was like, “I can’t be laughing right now.” He was so respectful and he just stayed really still because the scene began from when I was running from the woods to seeing Peter’s face, to knowing this isn’t good, to then discovering her in the back of the truck. But I didn’t look at Erin beforehand. I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want to know what I was — I didn’t know anything. And so when I turn that corner and go into the truck, that was the first time I was experiencing that moment, and it was hell.
Loss is something that basically everyone will experience at some point in their lives, so Peregrym wanted to take viewers into that mindset, even if the specific situation isn't the same.
"It's the worst feeling in the world," she explained. "And I didn't want it to wrap up. I didn't want it to feel okay in the end. It makes me cry thinking about it now because it's real."
It was hell. And I think what was really important for everybody in terms of telling the story, and specifically for me, is everybody’s lost somebody, we’re experiencing this a lot. It’s obviously not going to be the same scenario, but that grief and that fear and that, oh, it’s the worst feeling in the whole world. And I didn’t want it to wrap up. I didn’t want it to feel OK in the end. It makes me cry thinking about it now because it’s real.
Procedurals aren't typically given the time to dive deep into a lot of character development because each episode focuses on a different storyline.
But FBI season 8, episode 14, titled "Forgiven," allowed fans to watch a different type of plot than they're used to. As a result, Peregrym was "really grateful to the writers for trusting me with this episode...as scared as I was to do it."
Now that Maggie has experienced a major loss in her life, Peregrym hopes that fans will be able to relate to her FBI character in this "next chapter" of her life as she attempts to "make sense of her world now."
She might not be able to fully trust herself now, and she will likely always be on edge and worried that someone else she cares about will be threatened, injured or killed.
We’re a procedural show, so we don’t get to go this deep into the character, and I’m really grateful to the writers for trusting me with this episode in the moment, as scared as I was to do it. And I’m grateful — I haven’t seen it. I’m grateful that it’s turned out well, but my hope is that people can really relate to Maggie in the next chapter of having to get back up and how does she make sense of her world now after this gigantic loss, not even just with Erin, but with her career? How can she trust herself to move forward and be herself and be vulnerable or do her job without feeling that anybody she loves or herself is not going to be threatened again?
All of that will be felt going forward, but since the Dick Wolf-created FBI is a procedural, the lingering impact won't stick around "for a very long time." Peregrym will actually be absent from the next episode since her character is "dealing with the funeral."
When Maggie returns, though, she'll lean on her work to help her "stabilize." It's what she had to do before when her husband died, and now she has to reckon with this all over again.
This is the tricky part of our show. You’ve got to be able to turn the TV on and watch an episode out of order and understand what’s happening. And so, we don’t really carry on storylines for a very long time. Obviously, I’m impacted by this. I’m actually off the next episode — we’re saying that I’m dealing with the funeral and that stuff. Then, I come back, and my thinking is that I just have to get back to work. What else do I have? This is how I dealt with the death of my husband, and this is how I’ve moved forward. I’ve had to give [her late friend’s daughter] Ella away because of the risk of, again, DiStefano. And so it’s the only way I’ve known how to move forward is to get back to work, and I think that’ll help me stabilize. I don’t want to say too much, but it’s just not what I think moving forward.
While Maggie is off-screen planning her sister's funeral, the next episode of FBI, airing on March 23, will center on Agent Eva Ramos, as a drug kingpin re-enters her life after a drug exposure kills a daycare worker and two children.
Throughout the mission, Eva tries to deal with her own need for revenge without ruining the case she and her team have been tasked with overseeing.
FBI airs Mondays at 9 p.m. EDT on CBS.
Release Date
September 25, 2018
Directors
Dick Wolf
Writers
Dick Wolf
-
Missy Peregrym
Maggie Bell
-
Zeeko Zaki
Omar Adom OA Zidan
Image via CBS
English (US) ·